Sátántango

by George Szirtes (Author), László Krasznahorkai (Author)

New
Hardcover
2012
$14.37

In the darkening embers of a Communist utopia, life in a desolate Hungarian town has come to a virtual standstill. Flies buzz, spiders weave, water drips and animals root desultorily in the barnyard of a collective farm. But when the charismatic Irimias - long-thought dead - returns to the commune, the villagers fall under his spell. The Devil has arrived in their midst. Irimias will divide and rule: his arrival heralds the beginning of a period of violence and greed for the villagers as he sets about swindling them out of a fortune that might allow them to escape the emptiness and futility of their existence. He soon attains a messianic aura as he plays on the fears of the townsfolk and a series of increasingly brutal events unfold. Satantango follows the villagers as they are exploited and taken in by Irimias; as they drink and stumble their way toward the gradual realization of their mistake and ultimate demise. In its measured prose and long, Tolstoyan sentences, Satantango is nothing short of a literary masterpiece; a formal meditation on death and avarice, human fallibility and faith.

Synopsis

In the darkening embers of a Communist utopia, life in a desolate Hungarian town has come to a virtual standstill. Flies buzz, spiders weave, water drips and animals root desultorily in the barnyard of a collective farm. But when the charismatic Irimias - long-thought dead - returns to the commune, the villagers fall under his spell. The Devil has arrived in their midst. Irimias will divide and rule: his arrival heralds the beginning of a period of violence and greed for the villagers as he sets about swindling them out of a fortune that might allow them to escape the emptiness and futility of their existence. He soon attains a messianic aura as he plays on the fears of the townsfolk and a series of increasingly brutal events unfold. Satantango follows the villagers as they are exploited and taken in by Irimias; as they drink and stumble their way toward the gradual realization of their mistake and ultimate demise. In its measured prose and long, Tolstoyan sentences, Satantango is nothing short of a literary masterpiece; a formal meditation on death and avarice, human fallibility and faith.

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
Pages: 320
Publisher: Atlantic Books
Published: 01 May 2012
ISBN 10: 1848877641
ISBN 13: 9781848877641

Media Reviews

'A masterpiece of modern European literature. Brilliant, unforgiving, gripping. Essential reading for anyone wishing to comprehend the dark heart of the 20th century.' * Alex Preston, author of This Bleeding City *
I fell in love with the fierce, barbed intelligence in his sentences... Krasznahorkai is the kind of writer who at least once on every page finds a way of expressing something one has always sensed but never known, let alone been able to describe. -- Nicole Krauss
Like something far down the periodic table of elements, Krasznahorkai's sentences are strange, elusive, frighteningly radioactive. They seek to replicate the entropic whirl of consciousness itself... Haunting, pleasantly weird and, ultimately, bigger than the worlds they inhabit. -- Jacob Silverman * New York Times Book Review *
Regarded as a classic, [Satantango] is a monster of a novel: compact, cleverly constructed, often exhilarating, and possessed of a distinctive, compelling vision... It is brutal, relentless and so amazingly bleak that it's often quite funny. This is an obviously brilliant novel. Krasznahorkai is a visionary writer... The grandeur is clearly palpable. -- Theo Tait * Guardian *
Intoxicating and exhilarating, bleak yet beautiful, Satantango is a modern masterpiece that manages to speak both of its time and to transcend it altogether. -- Beth Jones * Sunday Telegraph *
This majestic translation finally gives us its inimitable, nightmarish pleasures at first hand. * Sunday Times *

Author Bio

Laszlo Krasznahorkai is a Hungarian writer born in 1954. Krasznahorkai has been honoured with numerous literary prizes, among them the highest award of the Hungarian state, the Kossuth Prize and, in 1993, the German Bestenliste Prize for the best literary work of the year.